The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of violence, death by suicide, and death.

With the members of the caravan, Samir trades the coral for sea sponges, sugarcane syrup, and gold. They go to a teahouse to avoid Gracus, who is at the main gathering hall in the city. Samir teased the teahouse owners’ children with gold coins and stories, earning free food as a result. Monkey notes that Samir seems to genuinely love children even though he doesn’t seem to have ever been a father. 

Samir gives Monkey some dumplings to bring to Mara, but as he goes to leave, he sees an old Chinese poisoner sit down across from Samir. Monkey tries to warn Samir, but Samir dismisses him. Monkey insists that he just wants to earn another bolt toward his freedom for saving Samir’s life. Samir tells him to return in an hour and raise a ruckus. Before leaving, Monkey quickly checks that Samir doesn’t plan to die by suicide by drinking poison on purpose. Samir dismisses this, insisting he still has plenty of reasons to live.

Monkey is still nervous, so he watches from outside the tent. Samir invites the poisoner to play chess, suggesting they drink raki for every piece they lose. Samir quickly loses a pawn and drinks the whole glass. To the poisoner’s confusion, he shows no effects from the clearly poisoned cup. The poisoner drinks next, and while he coughs through the flavor, Samir tells Monkey to leave.

Monkey finds Mara combing loose wool from a sheep; she claims she and her father are weavers now, but then they overhear her father telling someone they are felters. Monkey is heartbroken, since this means they are leaving the caravan. He gives Mara the food, but she doesn’t seem particularly grateful; he then suggests that he can join them when he is free, which she dismisses. She insists that he won’t be able to find them, looking away. She then tells him that her father’s name is not Smithy, but Accidentalist. Monkey realizes that Mara and Smithy are Cid.

Mara confirms that Rasseem hired them to kill Samir because he was angry about how Samir treated him—specifically, how he mocked Rasseem’s bad breath but wouldn’t give him his toothpaste. However, Mara and Smithy decided that they would let the approaching Rogue Legion do the work, following their Accidentalist philosophy. If the remaining killers can’t kill Samir and Monkey, a well-placed accident will. She also reveals that they destroyed the well near the beginning of the story—Samir was narrowly saved by Monkey’s testimony. They work through “accidents” to kill and harm others, even whole economies. 

Heartbroken, Monkey sprints back to Samir and starts a ruckus, as commanded, by announcing that Mara has broken his heart. Samir and the poisoner are still playing chess; Samir is sober while the poisoner is drunk and clumsily poisoning each cup. Samir and the poisoner drink together as the poisoner wins the game, but Samir switches their cups. Before he dies, the poisoner realizes that Samir filled his cup with a sea sponge so that he did not drink.

Samir and Monkey lug the corpse into a nearby grove to get rid of it. Monkey wonders if love is real at all; he decides he doesn’t want to “live in a world where it was only ever sold, rather than given” (163). He tells Samir that the legion is hunting them, but before he can tell him that the rest of the caravan family has betrayed him, Bedouin raiders arrive.

Samir, Rostam, and Monkey flee from the raiders. Rostam runs into them and knocks them down, and the raiders catch up. The leader of the raiders, Lateef, accuses Samir of cheating him, claiming nobody is paying him to kill Samir. Samir makes conversation about his wife and sons (Lateef says his wife says hello) and then uses wordplay to convince Lateef that there is no point in killing him since he has no money. Samir eventually trades his life for gold, toothpaste, and Monkey’s blessing for the raiders, earning Monkey another bolt toward freedom. 

The raiders take the poisoner’s corpse. Monkey asks if they will bury him, and in response, Lateef cuts off the man’s ear and hands it to Monkey, ordering him to bury it instead.